


Sunflowers

by AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)



Category: The Signs of the Zodiac - Rasputina (Song)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Gen, Religious Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 10:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11034204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: Amy's dying. Julia doesn't know what to do.





	Sunflowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Longpig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Longpig/gifts).



Julia sits and watches her sister’s face, as the ventilator hums and the heart monitor beeps its irregular beep. Amy’s supposed to be animated. Active. _Alive_. Not…not _this_.

“You picked the worst time of year for this, you know,” Julia tells Amy conversationally. “What with Grandma dying in early April and Dad in mid-April and Grandpa in early May. The last thing Mom needs is _your_ anniversary _too_.”

Yes, this was three different years—four, if Amy—but everyone knows Miranda White vanishes into a downward spiral starting around St. Patrick’s and doesn’t surface until St. Joan’s. It’s been this way since Julia was in high school. There isn’t anything particularly special about May 30, Julia has always figured, except for the bit where it’s Jeanne d’Arc’s death day and saint day, but she doesn’t want to find out the hard way that whatever power May 30—or Mom’s saint medal—wields over Mom’s emotional state doesn’t work when there have just been four anniversaries, not three.

“They’re talking about taking you off life support,” Julia says. She can hear the flatness to her own voice. “Mom won’t let them, you know she won’t—but—”

But the fact that Dr. Bhattacharya brought it up meant—

And even if Amy were somehow, miraculously, to recover—would she ever draw again? Ever dance, ever sing? Who could Amy be, if denied her arts?

Julia does not believe in miracles. Amy does, but Amy lies still in this bed, nothing moving save, perhaps, her eyes behind their lids.

Julia does not believe in miracles.

Julia does not believe—

But she is seized with the conviction that _someone_ , _somehow_ , can help Amy, _right now_ , if only properly asked—and it can hardly _hurt_.

She looks around the room, nervously. There are seven other beds in the room, not all occupied; those occupants are of necessity focused on themselves, and the two nurses and handful of other patients’ family and friends are ignoring Amy’s corner of the room. Good; they don’t see Julia’s heart racing, or her hands shaking, as she drops to her knees beside Amy’s bed.

 _Hail Mary, full of grace,_ she thinks, and forgets the next line. _Hail Mary, full of grace. Hail Mary, full of grace._

_Amy’s dying. Amy’s—_

Julia hesitates before continuing. _I don’t think Mom can survive losing Amy too._

_I don’t know if **I** can survive losing Amy too._

_Please, Mary mother of Christ, pray for us._

Amy doesn’t twitch.

—And yes, okay, it is probably foolish to expect instantaneous results. Or, truth be told, _any_ results; Mom isn’t here right now because she’s at daily Mass, no doubt praying fervently for Amy’s recovery, as she has been for the past few weeks. Or possibly Mass has ended, and rather than go in peace to love and serve the Lord and one another _just_ yet, Mom has stayed to pray the rosary. Julia isn’t sure how long daily Mass lasts, though she’s pretty sure it’s shorter than Sunday Mass.

But that conviction that drove her to her knees is still there, only—the sense she has is that of a frown. As though Julia’s done something wrong.

 _The first commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God._ Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2112. Julia remembers writing those two sentences three hundred times exactly, the time Mom caught her praying to the sun god—it was a rainy day, and Megan always joked about being from that family Asimov had written about, the ones who were made of sugar and dissolved in the rain.

 _Any angel who’s listening!_ Julia pleads. _Pray for us!_

Nothing changes, except that a tear drips off Julia’s nose.

 _Any demon! Any devil!_ Amy would say this is dangerous. Julia is not sure she cares. _Any god! Anyone—anyone at all—who has the ability to save my sister, and the willingness to try! I’ll—_ She sobs outright. _I’ll do anything you want. Anything at all!_

“Hey there,” says a familiar voice, and something soft is pressed into Julia’s hand.

She looks at it—a tissue, that’s all—and presses it to her eyes. The tissue is damp in moments; Julia can hardly draw a breath for crying. _We’re going to lose her. We’re going to lose Amy too, and what will we do then?_

“First, don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched,” the woman says in a no-nonsense voice. “Some eggs are only good for deviling or frying, you know.”

Julia snorts, and sniffles. Another tissue is offered; she takes it and blows her nose.

“Second, _if_ Amy dies, then you’ll mourn the loss of a fine artist—more, a beloved sister. But the earth doesn’t stop turning just because one person dies, and time is a great healer.”

“Hasn’t helped Mom much,” Julia mumbles.

“No, I suppose not. But third. ‘Anything’ is a dangerous bet, Julia. You _know_ you only go all in at the poker table when you’ve got a winning hand, or else when you’re willing to lose your stake if they call your bluff.”

Julia looks up, and seeing the woman’s face, she places the voice. “Cassie?” Julia doesn’t know the somewhat older woman well, but Cassie’s rambunctious young niblings are often the talk of the library fiber arts circle.

“Right now it’s Reverend Cassandra,” she says. “Kate Morrison—you remember her—she had her baby too early. I was leaving her room when I heard you.”

Julia glances down the length of the ward towards the only door through which Cassie could have entered. She hadn’t _thought_ she was speaking aloud…and none of the other people in the room seem to be paying any attention to her…

Cassie leans down a little from the second chair by Amy’s bed and whispers, “Magically speaking, you are _very loud_.”

“There’s no such thing as magic,” Julia repeats dully. Mom’s assertions to this effect have never quite made sense to Julia—Catechism 2117, after all, condemns the practice; why would the Church oppose something with no reality?—but she’s never seen that it’s a false assertion, either.

Cassie straightens and shrugs. “Sit,” she suggests. Julia gets up, hears a joint pop, bites back a curse, and settles back into her chair. Cassie pulls something out of her tote bag, hands it over—it’s crocheted fabric, Julia notes, cotton from the texture, striped in hearth red and flame gold. “Prayer shawl,” Cassie explains. “Please, wear it in good health.”

Julia thinks about draping it over the sheet that covers most of Amy.

“No, it’s for you,” Cassie says.

Julia, who _knows_ she said nothing aloud, eyes Cassie, but unfolds the shawl and swirls it over her shoulders. At once it’s as though the sounds of the hospital are muffled, the sterile scent less intense; a tension in the back of her brain eases. “What—”

“Well, there might be a touch of shielding magic woven in,” Cassie says. “You’re lucky _I_ heard you, not someone who—well, someone who might take advantage of that ‘anything’ you offered.”

“What do you mean,” Julia asks slowly, feeling the world slowly tilt on its axis, “when you say it’s a dangerous bet?”

“The Someone might insist your price is, for instance, your life,” Cassie says quietly. “Or that of your firstborn child. Or it might be that the price is to _bear_ the Someone’s child—and while I have never had to deal with a dangerous person who has by birth more power than any ordinary human, magic-trained or otherwise, the stories I hear say such people are _vicious_ to neutralize. You wouldn’t want to raise one.”

Julia contemplates the feats the first Harry Potter book describes as the result of accidental magic in a small child, and briefly envisions herself as Mrs. Granger. And she remembers how Hermione’s parents’ story ends.

“Rumor has it a young lady once promised ‘anything’ to a god,” Cassie continues, “and that’s where we got Jesus Christ. I mean, by all reports _he_ was a decent fellow, but look at some of his followers!” She shudders theatrically.

Julia laughs a little, and stops, remembering Megan. She doesn’t know what happened to her after Megan ran away—but she does remember the rumors that it was less ‘ran away’ than ‘was kicked out for being a lesbian’.

This is a personal quirk Julia has never mentioned to Mom or Amy.

“You must have a point to this story,” Julia says.

Cassie looks Julia dead on. “I cannot make promises,” she says. “But if you are desperate enough to be willing to promise ‘anything at all’ to ‘anyone at all’ who is both able and willing to save your sister’s life—then I have another avenue of approach.”

Julia’s heart leaps. She says nothing.

“Tell me, Julia,” Cassie continues. “Do you believe in the signs of the zodiac?”

“Astrology is bunk,” Julia says, confused, and recalls it’s banned by Catechism 2116, to boot.

Cassie starts humming something. Julia recognizes it, after a moment, from Carl Sagan’s _Cosmos_ , the original series. “What does the ‘Aquarius’ song have to do with anything?”

“‘This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius,’” Cassie quotes. “The end of the age of Pisces, the fish—a Christian symbol, reflecting the dominance of Christianity over the past two thousand years, about one-twelfth of the Great Cycle—and the beginning of an age of magic.”

“Magic,” Julia repeats.

“Yes,” says Cassie. “Magic. Backed, we hope and pray, by the power of the Gods.”

Julia can hear the capital G. _The first commandment condemns polytheism—_

“It can’t hurt to try,” Julia says.

Cassie smiles. “I thought you might say that.” She turns to face Amy on the bed for the first time. “We’ll need your sister’s consent, of course.”

“And how are you planning to get that?” Julia demands.

Cassie rubs her chin. “I’m hoping she’s awake enough in there to be dreaming. If she’s dreaming, we can go say hi, and explain, and ask.”

Amy’s going to say no. Julia knows that at once. Amy, who only hasn’t gone to be a nun yet because Mom said not till Amy graduated college and because Amy’s been praying the Church will formally allow female priests before Amy’s done anything to mean she can’t, then, be one.

But Julia squares her shoulders under the cotton weave of the prayer shawl. The Church opposes suicide, too, and there’s a chance that Amy will see ‘declining a chance to live’ as the same thing. “Let’s do this.”

“I’ll take you in with me,” Cassie says, and holds out a hand. Julia takes it, takes Amy’s hand with her other, and listens and obeys as Cassie tells her in a low gentle voice to breathe slowly, to close her eyes, to think about somewhere she might find Amy, and follow the path to that place…

* * *

Sir Amy twists and ducks away from the red dragon’s blue flame. Blue means _hot_ , and hot means _melt_ , and she doesn’t want to find out what happens to her when her armor melts with her in it. She vaults back to her feet, darts the ten feet to the enchanted shield that had slipped from her grip last time the dragon struck her—it’s harder to dance with the shield in her grasp, but she has a better chance of getting close enough to use her sword—

The dragon whips its head to the left and breathes again. Amy follows its gaze and _holy fucking shit is that Julia_ and someone else, no one Amy knows, but Amy will be _damned_ if they get hurt—she whips her own energy across the gap, and it’s a tangled mess of a dome over Julia and companion but the blue flame splashes across it, hissing, without coming nearer than two feet to the two women. _Amy_ drops to one knee: she’s figured out that it’s quite literally her own strength powering this sort of thing, but she’s not in the hot seat right at the moment, and if the dragon decides to turn back to her, well, her shield is big enough to hide behind.

Julia’s companion—she might be five years older than Julia? maybe ten?—raises her arms, palms to the sky, and moves her mouth as though speaking. Amy has no idea what the woman might be saying, but she feels the energetic landscape shift, and abruptly the dragon flees.

Amy looks around, but no other threats appear. She doesn’t get up—she can’t, she finds, trying; the best she can do is sheath her sword, take the sheath off the sword belt, stand the sheathed sword on its tip, and lean on that. Breathing hard, she waits for Julia to rush over to her. The other woman follows more sedately.

“Amy!” Julia exclaims, falling to her knees and flinging her arms around Amy’s armored shoulders. She’s wearing a shawl, Amy notes idly, a red-and-gold rectangle Amy’s never seen before “Amy, Amy—I thought—”

She smiles tiredly. “Hi. How did you get here?” For the first time in—months, it seems—she finds herself hoping that this truly isn’t hell.

Julia flicks a glance back at her companion. “Uh, long story. Are you okay? We’ve been so worried…”

“Shockingly enough,” Amy says, “fighting dragons all the livelong day is _exhausting_. Some St. George I am,” she adds, bitterly. “I have been praying and praying and _praying_ to find whatever rabbit hole I fell down so I can climb back up it and get _home_ …” She drags in a deep breath, exhales. “You wouldn’t understand, I don’t think. Since I know perfectly well you only go to Mass on Christmas and Easter, and that only so Mom and I don’t fuss.”

“Understand what?” Julia asks blankly.

“How it feels when the God you love and adore abandons you.”

“Are you certain of that?” Julia’s companion asks quietly, taking a seat beside them.

Amy looks at her and snorts. “Aren’t we in hell?”

“Oh,” says the woman. “No. This is your dreamscape.”

She thinks about that. It does feel dreamlike, but there’s a problem with this hypothesis. “I know what dreams feel like,” Amy says. “For one, God is always present. Perhaps He does not answer when called upon, perhaps He chooses to be distant, but _I can always feel Him_. Here, I cannot. For two…when I am dreaming, I can wake up.”

“You’re in a coma,” Julia says flatly. “You had a stroke. _Like Dad._ And you are going to die. _Like Dad._ ”

“But you are not dead,” says the woman. “Not yet.” She pauses. “Let me introduce myself. Reverend Cassandra Thorne, priest of Apollon and Athena and certain others of Their pantheon. Julia knows me from the library knitting circle.”

Amy nods slowly. “So,” she says. “Not dead—but not waking. How long have I been comatose?”

“ _Long enough,_ ” Julia says, furious. “I guess you didn’t hear me a few minutes ago. They’re thinking about taking you off life support.”

“ _No_ ,” says Amy at once. “That’s—no, no, no. I want to _live_.”

Julia clutches Amy tighter for a long moment, then pulls back. “The doctors have tried _everything_ they can think of,” Julia says vehemently. “Mom’s been praying every minute. _I’ve_ prayed, even! But you just keep sliding lower on the Glasgow scale.”

“The what?”

“You’re getting worse.” Tears sparkle in the corners of Julia’s eyes. “You’re getting worse, and you’re going to _die_ , and then where will Mom be? What am I going to do without you, little sister?”

Amy breathes in, and breathes out. “I don’t want to die,” she says. “I want to live.”

Not just for Julia. Not just for Mom. For herself.

Why else, after all, was she fighting the dragons, instead of just—standing still and taking the blast?

“I can make no promises,” said Reverend Thorne. “But there may be a way.” Amy looks her way. “We need your consent to try.”

She wants to say yes at once. “What do you want to do?” Amy asks.

“Magic,” says Julia. “And prayer, to Gods who might answer. I don’t know exactly what magic, or which Gods, but—and you know the Catechism forbids this as well as I do—”

“I know,” Amy says.

She leans on Julia, considering. If she has time to rest before another dragon comes at her, she will probably be able to survive the onslaught. But she’s worn to the bone, and she’s no nearer finding her way out of this dragon-studded hellscape. (It would actually be a pastoral paradise, if there were no dragons.) Julia’s right: Amy is dying.

And the place in her heart that has always before been warm with the presence of Christ—even when He was distant, a single small candle burned—is cold and empty.

Amy pushes herself a little more upright. “I would like,” she says carefully, “a sign, please, from Whomever Julia and Reverend Thorne will be calling on to save me, should I consent that they try. Show me that Someone cares enough about me to help me survive.”

Something twitches in the grass, a few inches from the point of Amy’s sheathed sword. A green thing shoots up, and bursts open, and in moments a sunflower stands proudly, as tall as the sword is long.

Amy bursts into tears.

Julia, sobbing, pulls her close. “It’s okay,” Julia says, “it’s okay, it’s going to be okay…”

Reverend Thorne holds out a pair of tissues. Amy takes one, and when the crying has subsided, she straightens her spine and looks Reverend Thorne in the eye.

“Do it,” Amy says.

Reverend Thorne nods. “I hoped you would say so.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t,” Julia mutters.

“What?” Amy stares at her sister. “Why?”

Julia shakes her head. “Let’s talk when you’re awake, huh?”

Amy nods. “Yeah.”

“We should leave the way we came,” says Reverend Thorne, “now that we have the consent we came for.” She looks around. “I pray Athena Who Girds With Armor grants you strength to keep fighting—we can’t bring you out with us, you understand.”

“I figured,” Amy says. She takes inventory: she might be able to stand, now—because she has rested, or because the Reverend’s Goddess has aided her? she wonders.

“The dragon will probably be back as soon as we leave,” Reverend Thorne adds apologetically.

Amy smiles. “I’ll deal.”

Julia says, “You do that.”

* * *

Julia stirs. Back in the hospital ward. She’s still holding Amy’s and Cassie’s hands.

“Back with me?” Cassie asks quietly.

“I think so,” Julia says, letting go. “Was that a _dragon_?”

“I suppose,” says Cassie. “Your sister seems to imagine herself St. Joan.”

Julia starts laughing, and then starts coughing.

“Okay,” Julia says when she can breathe again. “So how do we do the save-Amy thing?”

“Not here, I think,” Cassie answers. “Teaching you magic—and I do believe you need to learn in your own right—is best done around less…vulnerable…people.”

Julia nods. “Where to?”

“How about the park by the lake? Plenty of space—” Cassie looks up. “Ah, Nurse.”

“Reverend,” answers the nurse. “Miss White?” He holds out an envelope to Julia. “From one of your sister’s artistically inclined classmates, I’m told.”

“Thank you,” Julia says, and takes the envelope—addressed of course to Amy White—and turns it over to open the flap.

It’s sealed with a sunflower sticker.

Julia’s heart misses a beat.

She should panic, she thinks dimly. Or—not panic, no more than one should panic when the fire alarm rings, but react in an orderly fashion to severe distress. The heart is what killed Dad, what was killing Amy. Irregularities like this aren’t a good sign.

But a _sunflower_.

“Are you all right, Miss White?”

Julia takes a deep breath. “Yes, thank you,” she tells him, when she thinks she can speak steadily.

The nurse nods and immediately loses interest in Julia. Once he’s done fussing over Amy’s still form and the machines she’s hooked to and moved on to the next, Cassie says, “Shall we head to the park, then?”

Julia stands up, wobbles, and sits back down.

“To the vending machines,” Cassie corrects herself, “or a fast-food joint, and then to the park.”

Julia frowns at her.

“You used more strength than I think you realize getting into and out of that dreamscape. Even if the brunt of it _was_ on me,” Cassie adds, ruefully. “I could stand to eat myself.” She pauses. “And you’ve had—something of a shock, today.”

“I’ll say,” says Julia.

“Oh, honey.” Cassie hesitates, then rests her hand on Julia’s arm. “I know how this hurts.”

“Tell Amy that,” says Julia.

* * *

Julia spends the next two weeks, any time she’s not working (to include doing the household tasks Mom can’t manage right now) or sleeping or sitting with Amy, getting the quick and dirty version of witch lessons from Cassie, or from Laura or Cheryl or Tina, all acquaintances from the library fiber arts circle. “We’ll show you how to do it properly later,” Cassie explains, “but for now, with our guidance, this should work.”

“Why aren’t you showing me how to do it properly now?” Julia wonders.

Cassie just looks at her. “Do you _want_ to spend a year practicing basics before trying to wake Amy?”

“—no.”

So Cassie and Laura and Cheryl and Tina walk Julia through breathing exercises. Centering her soul-self at her physical center. Drawing that soul-self _in_ and _down_ and rooting herself in Mother Earth. Giving unwanted emotion and sour energy to the earth; drawing peace and sweet energy back through those roots and up to kiss the sky. Wrapping herself in that energy to keep her thoughts and emotions _in_ and others’ _out_ , doing for herself the way the red-and-gold prayer shawl was doing for her.

Julia thinks it’s mostly Cassie who designs the ritual itself; it’s as much a religious rite, she thinks, reading over the spell-script, as a magical working. But then, that only makes sense.

* * *

The evening that they’ve planned to do the working, Julia gets in the shower—ritual cleanliness is an important part of this, Cassie’s said—and starts to panic. _What if I do this wrong? What if we can’t—what if it’s not enough—what if Mom and the Church were right all along and these aren’t **Gods** gods, just demons or devils or—_

But she had been willing to promise _any_ such party _any_ thing they might want from her, if only Amy lived.

 _Apollon,_ she thinks loudly. _Healer, and Singer, and Averter of Harm._ Julia doesn’t know the Greek titles yet, but English will do. _Please. Help me, so that I may make offering to You without fear._

Breath by breath she drags herself back into balance.

* * *

The altar is only a picnic table, spread with a sky-blue cloth. The five of them have chosen to work with Apollon and Athena, Healers, for this; Cassie’s assured them all that They are willing to help. (Divination. Catechism 2116—but Julia squishes her mother’s little voice.) There’s a statue of each, no more than three inches high, on either side of a pillar candle, and a bowl of water sits before it and an unglazed ceramic tile behind.

“Are you sure this will work?” Julia asks, almost at the last moment.

“I can’t promise,” Cassie says. “But I believe in Them, and I believe in you.” She smiles. “This will really work.”

Julia leads the procession to the altar. She has the first task, the simplest, but perhaps the most important.

She focuses her will on the candle wick.

_I don’t know if I can do this—but I have to, for Amy— **light**!_

Its flame springs to life.

Julia smiles and begins her prayer to Hestia of the Hearth—to bless this fire so that, when Julia lights a dried bay leaf at the candle and extinguishes it in the water, the water will be purified. She can’t quite, herself, feel the change in the water as it becomes holy, but she dips her (physically clean) hands in the bowl anyway, for spiritual cleanliness, and hands the bowl to Tina behind her so that each of the others can do the same.

Next, she prays to Apollon, and to Athena: standing, arms raised, palms up. Julia asks the two Gods for the gift of Their presence, and the blessing of Their strength lent to this magical working. “So that Amy White will survive,” she says. “So that my sister will live.”

_And what do you offer in return for Our assistance?_

Julia staggers. Someone steps up quickly and catches her—it’s Cheryl, she sees from the silver bangle on her friend’s left wrist.

That wasn’t in words. But the sense is clear.

 _What,_ Julia thinks clearly, _would You each consider a desirable and appropriate offering?_

 _Serve Me for a year and a day,_ answers the same voice, or so the sense of it might best be rendered into words.

 _Deliver a message to your sister, when she wakes._ This second voice, distinctly deeper-pitched, comes with an image—a woman in red, dancing before the rising sun.

Anything, Julia said.

 _Oh is **that** all,_ Julia thinks before she can stop herself. _Yes. Yes. ___

____

__

Laura has already begun the next step of the ritual—she has lit two cones of incense (they had settled on lavender) from the pillar candle, and set them on the tile to smoke. Julia listens to the prayers in silence, feeling the pressure build, and joins the incantation, and feeds her strength into the spell.

Though she can’t quite see the flows of energy—not yet—somehow Julia knows that a good third of the power knitting itself into a spell is of a royal purple hue, and nearly half, saffron gold.

The spell binds off—evaporates, gone to do its task—and the pressure vanishes.

Cassie thanks Apollon and Athena, in a weary voice, and leads the procession away.

They circle back again, of course, to tidy away the altar and eat a picnic supper—they all need the food badly—and Laura gets out a large deck of what turn out, when Julia asks, to be tarot cards. The Gaian Tarot, actually, and Laura lets Julia flip through the deck—and Julia stops, staring at one particular card. The Sun—a woman in red, dancing before the rising sun; there are sunflowers.

“May I borrow this card?” she asks.

Laura stares at her for a long moment, and says, “Yes.”

When Julia gets back to her car, card in hand, the first thing she does is turn her phone back on. There’s a text waiting, from Mom: _Amy moved! Only a twitch, but she moved! Thank God!_

* * *

Amy improves rapidly, after that, climbing the Glasgow Coma Scale like stairs. Julia is at work when she gets the text from Mom saying Amy was briefly awake, and it’s all she can do _not_ to rush immediately to the hospital.

When there’s finally a chance to speak privately, when Amy is lucid enough for long enough to converse coherently and Julia can be with her while otherwise alone—it happens to be May 30—Julia asks, “What do you remember?”

“Not much,” Amy says. “It was…a lot like a dream. I would have had to write it down immediately to remember it all.” She looks over at the cards on the bedside table. “I remember a dragon. And a sunflower. And you.”

Julia nods. “I have a message for you,” she says. “I’m not sure you’ll believe who it’s from.” She pulls Laura’s tarot card out of her purse and shows it to Amy.

“Sunflowers,” Amy says, staring at the Sun card. “I. I’m not alone.” Eyes watering, she smiles up at Julia. “It’s Him, isn’t it? Apollo? I’m not alone after all.”

“I’m always here,” Julia says. “And it’s _Apollon_.”

Amy accepts that with a tiny nod. “I thought…well, never mind what I thought,” she says, glancing towards the doorway. Julia looks over and sees Mom has just come in. “I’ll tell you later.” She returns the card, and Julia tucks it away.

Mom bustles up, grinning. “Have the doctors told you how well you’re doing?” she asks. Her St. Joan medal catches the light.

“Physical therapy,” says Amy, sounding disgusted. “Lots and _lot_ s of physical therapy. And I still might have trouble with things when I’m as good as I’m getting—we don’t know what things yet, though. I hope I can draw again,” she says, suddenly worried.

“Does it matter?” asks Mom, sounding confused. Julia glares at her—had the woman no conception of how important art was to Amy? “You’re alive. That’s enough of a miracle. Thank God!”

Amy glances up at Julia.

“Yes,” Julia agrees. “A miracle.”


End file.
